Despite a massive proliferation of indie game bundles, I usually only stick to two: Indie Royale and Humble Bundle. Both give really great games, but while Humble Bundle tends to release games that are already proven to be good, Indie Royale tends to lean on the side of the experimental or odd. The latest Indie Royale – the Evolved Bundle – is no exception. All the games contained therein are interesting is some way.

For reference, you get five games with this bundle: Unmechanical, a puzzle game about a hovering helicopter robot; The Path, an experimental adventure-art game about the myth of Little Red Riding Hood; Krater, a squad-based dungeon crawler set in a neon post-apocalyptic Sweden; Sugar Cube, a platformer involved tile switching and a sugar cube protagonist; and OIO, a puzzle-platformer about a lonely man made of wood. I especially recommend Krater, as it’s the best squad-based action game I’ve played since Freedom Force. Trailer for the bundle is below.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/indie-royale-gets-complex-with-the-evolved-bundle/feed/010 Great Games You Probably Didn’t Play in 2011, But Shouldhttp://www.gamefront.com/10-great-games-you-probably-didnt-play-in-2011-but-should/
http://www.gamefront.com/10-great-games-you-probably-didnt-play-in-2011-but-should/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2011 19:38:35 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=142536In a year of great games, some phenomenal offerings got overshadowed. Here's what you're missing.

We’ve seen a huge number of pretty great games in 2011. The triple-A category has been bursting with sequels that are actually good, ranging from solidly awesome multiplayer offerings in games such as Driver: San Francisco, Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, to awesome single-player-only campaigns in Deus Ex: Human Revolution and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

With the great titles coming non-stop from Dead Space 2 and Portal 2 straight through to Skyrim, it has been easy to miss even more great games that have been overshadowed by the biggest players in the industry. Smaller downloadable titles, indie masterpieces and the generally overlooked titles were waiting in the wings as the big guys took center stage. So we’ve compiled a list of titles that you might have missed but are definitely worth a look.

10. Puzzle Dimension

The “dimension” part of the Puzzle Dimension title is the key here. On its face, the game is pretty simple: you’ll roll a ball around platform-based levels, attempting to gather flowers that will open a portal to the next level. Some platforms are icy; others break beneath you. There’s no time limit and no hurry — it’s just you, the puzzle, and your requirement of figuring out how to traverse it in one attempt.

But the puzzles of Puzzle Dimension, as you might have guessed, are three-dimensional. Sometimes you’ll roll off the edge of a platform to fall to one below it; other times, gravity will shift beneath you as you roll around a circular path. You’ll really need to flex your spacial reasoning muscles to continue advancing in Puzzle Dimensions, and the game doesn’t make it easy on you, either.

9. PayDay: The Heist

Mix Left 4 Dead’s cooperative-style first-person shooter gameplay with every heist movie you’ve ever seen and you get PayDay: The Heist. It’s a downloadable title from Sony and Overkill Software that borrows liberally from the Left 4 Dead concept — four players, hordes of enemies, objectives to complete — but with a lot of style of its own. You and three friends don clown masks and participate in some pretty intense criminal activity, like bank robbery, hostage-taking, prisoner breakouts and more. If you’ve ever wanted to recreate some of the best scenes from Point Break or Heat, this is your chance.

With a price tag of only $20, PayDay can be a great time when played with friends. A high number of unlockable weapons and abilities allow players to differentiate their styles over time, and the heists always stay tense and exciting. If you’ve got three FPS fan friends, you should definitely get them to pick up PayDay along with you.

The Daily Independent is a recurring feature in which we shine a light into the darkened wilderness of indie gaming, illuminating both the good and the bad of what we find there.

Too often, cuteness in a given work is an indication we’re about to be treated to whimsy, nostalgia and cheese. This is likely due to our tendency to remember childhood as a time of perfect innocence and fun. However, childhood is also a time of vast confusion and, frankly, considerable danger (think about how you felt the first time you became separated from your parents in a scary public place and you get what I mean.) While I have nothing against nostalgic celebrations of childhood innocence, I’d rather that we see more works that get the contradiction between that innocence and vulnerability.

OIO’s puzzles are probably the best aspect of the game, but they have close competition from the astonishing environments and overall aesthetic. It reminded me of the early films of Tim Burton – when he was still arguably good, in other words. The titular character has an odd-shaped, inhuman-yet-emotive appearance reminiscent of some of the better moments in Beetlejuice, and the trunks of trees are striped like 1980s knee-high stockings. But it isn’t just a lengthy reference to other creations. The game alternates between a warm, earthy realism and an eye-popping, impressionistic quality. The fragments of light I mentioned glow with a dim incandescence, and fire appears as dabs of paint shaking brightly on the screen. Yet wooden constructs look well worn-in and water is deep, dark and ominous with beautiful reflections on the surface.

Best of all, though the game is a side-scroller, the world of OIO is convincingly enormous, with giant caverns stretching to the vanishing point, long dark shadows and the occasional petrified friend of OIO stuck in place, just to remind you that there is an entire society at stake.

Final judgement: OIO is a deceptively simple, beautiful little game with a rich variety of puzzles and some staggering environments, and is guaranteed to keep you transfixed far longer than you’d expect. And at a paltry 10 bucks, it’s absolutely worth every penny.

Spiffy looking side-scrolling puzzle-platformer OIO is available today on Gamer’s Gate and Desura for the low price of $9.99, and we have two things that are worth your attention if the game looks intriguing to you. The first, embedded far below, is the game’s launch trailer, which can give you a bit of insight as to what to expect from the running, collecting and puzzle-solving at hand.

If that whets your whistle, follow it up by downloading the demo below. You can be The Most Informed Consumer to ever spend $10.